Two Bananas

—But we have to be thankful, Denise. We’ve been blessed, both of us. You have to admit that much.

—I won’t deny it. Even so, we all have our struggles.

—Dayton will come around eventually. Surely it’s not as bad as you think, and besides, it could always be worse. For goodness’ sake, at least you don’t have breast cancer. At least your brother’s finally off your couch. You’re one of the lucky ones. The fortunate few. We’ve been blessed, Denise. Hashtag blessed.

—Shut up.

—I’m serious.

—Oh, I know you are, Stacey. I know it. Have I ever told you the banana story?

—No, but that’s so funny, because I’ve got a banana story, too.

—What’s yours?

—No, you first. Please.

—Well, this happened a long time ago. Around the time Princess Diana died.

—God, what a tragedy that was! Is it strange to say I miss her, a woman I never met in my life? I wish we had royalty here in America. It’s one thing we’re really lacking, as a culture. We’ve got our celebrities, sure, but it’s not the same, because you know half of them were born in Indiana or Iowa or some such place. They’re not much better than us, only luckier and a little better-looking.

—Diana’s death is incidental to my story. It only situates us in time. I was still living in the city then, and Dayton was maybe five years old, and we had this crazy dog.

—King Tut?

—Before King Tut. Tut’s predecessor. This dog’s name was Fillmore. Benny named him. Something to do with Millard Fillmore, the president. I never understood it. Benny had a peculiar sense of humor. Fillmore was part pit bull, and we had no yard to speak of, just a little patio, and the dog park, which was very nearby, didn’t allow any pit bulls or pit bull mixes. Apparently there had been a few unfortunate incidents, not with Fillmore but with other pits, little fights and scrapes, and so it had been decided by the powers that be, whoever that was exactly, that pit bulls were no longer welcome. That made life very difficult for us. Fillmore was super high energy, and unless he got some exercise every day he was impossible to control. We were renting a house at the time with lovely hardwood floors, and Fillmore had pretty much destroyed those floors running back and forth all day.

—Didn’t you clip his nails?

—Believe me, Stacey, we tried. But he’d flip if we went anywhere near those nails. He was a stray, we’d adopted him from the pound, and I suspect he might have suffered some sort of terrible nail trauma. Who can say what these dogs have gone through before they wind up in our homes? It’s frightening, when you think about it, their mysterious histories. Anyway, we’d given up on the nail situation, his claws were monstrous, and he’d destroyed the floors, and I was certain we were going to lose our entire security deposit unless we kept the dog exhausted, which meant it was necessary to get him outside at least twice a day. We’d found a baseball field, about a half-mile from the house, and most of the time the field was empty, so we’d drive him there and turn him loose to run. The baseball field was next to a playground, and so what I’d usually do was let the dog do his thing for a while and then put him back in the car while Dayton played on the playground and got his fill. Just for fifteen minutes or so. We couldn’t stay too long, because Dayton had his pre-K class, and I had work.

The problem with the baseball field was that it wasn’t totally enclosed. The gate was open at the far end. Most of the time, Fillmore was really good about staying inside the fence, but this one morning he got...